Archive for May, 2006

In years past buying stock was reserved for the rich. It was expensive and difficult to track and buy stocks. Sure you could go down to your bank, talk to a certified broker, and buy some shares. But that would cost you a bundle and make any small profit you made negligible if you were to only buy even 100 shares. That means the rich would be able to get richer, buying large blocks of shares while the commoner bought only 100 shares and spent most of his or her profits on fees.

Well times have changed since the dawn of the information age. Now you can by and sell shares, portions of shares, and all for under $10. Online brokers, electronic money transfers, and electronic markets (the NASDAQ) have made the average joe a stock trader (although most are still gamblers.)

Some of the easiest places to buy stock online are:

Sharebuilder.com - you can buy partial stock by buying just $100 of a stock rather than a share block

Scott Trade - $7, easy, cheap

E-Trade - Cheap and big, you can bank, loans, make toast, almost everything

TD Ameritrade - Cheap and easy as well plus TD Waterhouse backed

Buying stocks is easy now, start your research today and begin trading in days.

A mutual fund is an investment that allows multiple investors to pool funds together to purchase multiple stocks. A mutual fund is a tool used to diversify a portfolio with the purchase of one unit. A fund manager directs the money into equities that he or she feels will increase in value over time (you hope).

Basically a fund manager chooses multiple stocks, bonds, or commodities (equity) to create a value of the fund. Each equity holding weights the overall price of the mutual fund creating a unit price. The unit price of the fund fluctuates as the price of each equity fluctuates.

When Google Finance first came out towards the beginning of the year it was a little rough around the edges, to say the very least. It didn’t offer much in the way of quotes just a quick quote with some basic financial statistics, it didn’t allow people to search elsewhere for information which is standard with Google Products, and it didn’t offer any insight into the financials of the quoted companies like balance sheet etc.I really didn’t intend on visiting it again because my initial experience was lack luster. I wanted more information and could easily get that from Yahoo Finance.

In just a few short months all of that has changed.

Keeping with the spirit of what Google is, a simple, easy to use, very intuitive wealth of information, Google Finance has been transformed into a one stop shop for all your financial information. You have easy access to detailed quotes. Charts that follow news and are linked to news articles. You have an abundance of company information from financials to officers to insider trading.

Best part of all is you have an easy access point to all the other major financial reporting sites like, Yahoo Finance, The Street, Market Watch, and more. All the information you need is in one spot and organized in a way that makes sense.

Great job again Google for offering a wonderful product.

Probably one of the greatest investors of our time, possibly even all time, Warren Buffet, held his annual meeting for shareholders in Omaha, Nebraska this past weekend for the holding company he runs Berkshire Hathaway. A reported 25,000 people made the journey to listen to the oracle speak.

To get things off to an early start on Friday May 5th, Warren Buffet announced that he was using some of the extra cash of Berkshire to buy $5 Billion worth of an Israeli based metal cutting tools company. That purchase would represent an 80% stake in the company for Berkshire. This is a big jump into the international market for buffet, one that makes him now the biggest foreign investor in Israel with this single purchase.

Next on Saturday Buffet spoke on real estate and the “bubble market” that some feel has begun to explode. What Buffet and Munger basically stated was there is a lot of credit being offered and awarded to people that shouldn’t be going into much debt.

They both expected a cooling effect to occur soon and pull the ever-expanding market back down to earth.

Some other interesting articles regarding Buffet and the Berkshire Empire can be found at:

Buffet’s Extra Cash
Heading to Omaha
Inside the Meeting

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